The Douglas World Cruisers, the Army Air Service's Nineteen Twenty-Four Flight Around the World, and the Two Planes That Made It Home

On September 28, 1924, two biplanes landed in Seattle to complete the first aerial circumnavigation of the globe. The U.S. Army Air Service had departed from the same city 175 days earlier with four aircraft and eight men, crossing open ocean, tropical heat, and subarctic fog using dead reckoning, paper charts, and engines maintained by the same hands that flew them. It remains one of the most demanding expeditions in aviation history.

Why the Army Air Service Attempted a World Flight in 1924

The Army Air Service - the air arm of the U.S. Army before the Air Force became an independent branch in 1947 - had been planning the mission for two years before the first aircraft lifted off. Aviation in 1924 was still proving itself. The First World War had demonstrated that aircraft could fight. The question that followed was whether they could go anywhere.

The competition was genuine. British aviator Stuart MacLaren had a circumnavigation attempt underway. Italy was preparing its own. Argentina had already tried and failed. Being first mattered not just as a matter of national pride but as a statement about whose aviation industry was setting the pace. The Army Air Service intended to win that race.

The Douglas World Cruiser: Engineering for the Impossible

The Douglas Aircraft Company of Santa Monica, California - just two years old at the time - designed and built the aircraft specifically for this mission. The World Cruiser was a fabric-covered biplane with a wood and steel tube airframe and a wingspan of approximately 50 feet. It carried substantially more fuel than the torpedo bomber it was derived from, because fuel would be the defining constraint on nearly every leg of the journey.

Its most consequential engineering feature was interchangeable undercarriage. A capable ground crew could swap the aircraft between wheeled landing gear and pontoons in a matter of hours. The planned route alternated between ocean harbors and inland airfields across six continents. That flexibility wasn’t a convenience - it was a requirement.

Power came from the Liberty 12: a 400-horsepower, water-cooled V-12 with a proven wartime record. Dependable, but demanding of attention. And, as the crews would discover across Asia, not entirely content in tropical heat.

Four aircraft were built and named: the Seattle, the Chicago, the New Orleans, and the Boston.

The Eight Men Who Flew Them

The crews were experienced professionals selected for exactly that quality - not audacity, but accumulated judgment.

Major Frederick Martin commanded the expedition from the Seattle, with Staff Sergeant Alva Harvey as mechanic and co-pilot. Lieutenant Lowell Smith flew the Chicago with Lieutenant Leslie Arnold - Smith was methodical and precise, the kind of pilot who minimizes drama by anticipating problems before they develop. The New Orleans was crewed by Lieutenant Erik Nelson, whose logistical instincts proved critical throughout, and Lieutenant John Harding. The Boston carried Lieutenant Leigh Wade and Lieutenant Henry Ogden.

On April 6, 1924, all four aircraft lifted off from Lake Washington in Seattle and headed north.

Alaska and the Aleutians: The First Loss

The route ran up through Alaska and along the Aleutian chain - a long arc of volcanic islands extending from the Alaska Peninsula far enough west that on a clear day the Russian coast is visible. The weather through that chain is as raw as any on earth: fog, low ceilings, wind, terrain that is jagged and indifferent to aircraft.

The first loss came on April 30, 1924, three and a half weeks into the flight. Major Martin and Sergeant Harvey were navigating heavy fog near Port Moller on the Alaska Peninsula using dead reckoning - compass, stopwatch, and arithmetic. In those mountains, in those conditions, the margin is not generous.

The Seattle flew into a slope it couldn’t see. Both men survived. The aircraft did not.

What followed was ten days that no one had planned for. Martin and Harvey worked their way across approximately ten miles of Alaskan backcountry - through brush, bog, and cold - until they reached a location where rescuers could find them. They came out tired and roughed up but essentially whole. Two men alive. One aircraft destroyed. The three remaining crews pressed on.

Crossing the North Pacific

The Chicago, New Orleans, and Boston crossed the open North Pacific from Attu - the westernmost Aleutian island - to the Kurile chain off the Japanese coast. The planning staff had pre-positioned a Navy destroyer in those waters specifically for this leg. If an engine quit over open ocean, the crew came down where they were and hoped the ship reached them first.

All three aircraft crossed without incident.

Japan’s reception surprised the American crews. Crowds turned out at every stop. Officials hosted formal receptions. The Japanese press covered each arrival with genuine enthusiasm, and photographs from this leg show the aircraft completely surrounded by hundreds of people at every landing.

Heat, Maintenance, and Southeast Asia

From Japan the route continued to China, then south and west through Indochina, Burma, and India. This is where the Liberty 12’s limits in tropical conditions became impossible to ignore. Oil consumption increased. Cylinder head temperatures climbed. At each stop across Southeast Asia, the co-pilots - who were also the mechanics - climbed out of their cockpits and immediately began pulling cowlings in the heat, working on airfields that were often little more than cleared jungle.

What those crews had was a practiced, direct knowledge of their aircraft that is rare in modern aviation. They could hear a problem forming before the instruments showed it, because they were the ones who had torqued the cylinder head studs and adjusted the valve timing. When you maintain the machine that keeps you alive, guessing and corner-cutting are not options.

The route continued through Persia, Iraq, Turkey, and into Europe. By the time the aircraft crossed into France, the flight was international news. The competing attempts from Britain and other nations had fallen far behind schedule. It was becoming clear to everyone following the story that the Americans would finish first.

The Boston Goes Down in the North Atlantic

The Boston had been accumulating mechanical problems across thousands of miles. Lieutenant Wade and Lieutenant Ogden had kept their aircraft flying through careful attention to systems that were individually manageable but collectively concerning. The North Atlantic doesn’t credit effort.

Near the Faroe Islands, the Boston’s engine quit.

Wade brought the biplane down onto the surface of the North Atlantic - an open-ocean forced landing in a loaded aircraft in cold water. He put it down clean. Neither man was injured. The pre-positioned Navy destroyer reached them, and both were rescued. The Boston was lost.

Two aircraft gone. All eight crew members alive. The calculation made during the planning phase - that the men mattered more than the machines - had been validated twice.

The Final Legs and the Record

A replacement aircraft was provided for Wade and Ogden, designated the Boston II, and they rejoined the formation for the remaining legs. But by the expedition’s original terms, only aircraft that had flown every leg of the route would count as having circumnavigated the globe. That record belonged to the Chicago and the New Orleans alone.

Smith and Nelson flew the final stretch. Iceland. Greenland - in any season an exercise in fog, ice, and weather that develops without warning. South along the eastern seaboard of the United States, where a country that had been following the story in newspapers and early radio broadcasts for five months was waiting.

On September 28, 1924, the Chicago and the New Orleans landed in Seattle. 175 days after departure. 363 hours of flying time. 26,345 miles. The first aerial circumnavigation of the globe was complete.

Lowell Smith and Erik Nelson received the Mackay Trophy. All crew members received the Distinguished Service Medal. The reception in Seattle was, by all accounts, as loud as it was long overdue.

What These Numbers Actually Mean

The statistics are remarkable. The context is more so.

There was no satellite phone, no emergency locator transmitter, no weather uplink. When the Seattle went into that Alaskan hillside, the other three crews learned about it the same way the public did - slowly and secondhand, long after the fact. When the Boston went down in the North Atlantic, rescue was possible only because a planner in Washington had put a destroyer there months in advance, not because anyone pressed a button and had a helicopter airborne in minutes.

Every takeoff was irrevocable. The crews advanced the throttle and went, and whatever the world put in their path, they managed with what was in the cockpit and what they had accumulated over years. Cold in open cockpits over the North Pacific. Heat over Asia. Every navigation fix computed by hand. Every landmark verified against a paper chart.

Pilots used to speak of this flight the way climbers speak of Everest - the first time, when nobody had done it, and then somebody did.

Where to See the Chicago Today

The Chicago hangs in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., alongside the Wright Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, and John Glenn’s Friendship Seven. It belongs in that company.

The original expedition logs are held by the Air Force Historical Research Agency in Montgomery, Alabama.

Key Takeaways

• The U.S. Army Air Service completed the first aerial circumnavigation of the globe in 1924, with the Chicago and the New Orleans as the two aircraft that flew every leg of the route.
• The flight covered 26,345 miles over 175 days and 363 hours of flying time, departing and returning to Seattle.
• Two aircraft were lost - the Seattle in Alaska on April 30 and the Boston in the North Atlantic near the Faroe Islands - but all eight crew members survived.
• The Douglas World Cruiser’s interchangeable wheel/pontoon undercarriage was an engineering decision that made the route logistically possible.
• The Chicago is preserved at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where it remains on public display.